âš‘ â’¶ Free Software developer, Black Lives Matter, abolish all prisons, 0xACAB âš‘
Yesterday I posted Professor Kevin Westhues’ “Checklist of Mobbing Indicators,” and, as if by clockwork today I was mobbed on Twitter in a thread that matched 13 of the 16 indicators, point for point. I’ve been the target of what Westhues describes as mobbing, which is evidently a sociological term that sometimes also goes by …
Continue reading “Dear friends, please help. I am asking you for help.”
Earlier this week, I wrote “Tumblr is not a safe place for me,” in which I make the claim that the “report abuse” feature on corporate-controlled social networks fundamentally empowers cyberbullies, not their targets. (Here’s an archived copy in case it gets taken down.) Predictably, I just received a vaguely threatening email from Tumblr Support …
Continue reading “A case study in cyberbullying using Tumblr’s broken “Report Abuse” feature”
Despite many “anti-bullying” campaigns, online harassment and cyberbullying are prevalent behaviors. Most anti-abuse efforts fail because they tend to focus on appeals to authority. The now-ubiquitous “Report Abuse” buttons on social networking websites like Twitter are one such example, yet their ubiquity have not curbed the behaviors or harm they purport to address or mitigate. …
If you ever needed more proof that “the Internet is doing ‘report abuse’ wrong because its admins are corrupt,†here is a perfect case study. Today I received the following email from Twitter: Hello, We have received a second complaint from an individual that your account, @maymaym, is in violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules), …
Continue reading “How Twitter “protects you from abusers” actually protects abusers”